It comprises such diverse items as fishing gear, agricultural plastics, bottles, bags, food packaging, taps, lids, straws, cigarette butts, industrial pellets, and cosmetic microbeads, and the fragmentation debris coming from the weathering of all of them.
The metals are used in items as diverse as smartphones and smart bombs, in oil refining and in wind turbines.
Tyco, which is based in Bermuda and has its headquarters in Exeter, N.H., has 240,000 employees worldwide and makes items as diverse as syringes and security systems.
The blockades also shut down mail, parcel and cargo services, crippling exports of items as diverse as orchids, mangos, asparagus and electronics.
Chase, the attorney general's office said, violated its own privacy policy when it transferred 20 items of information about as many as 18 million credit card and mortgage holders nationwide -- including their home addresses, credit card purchases, finance charges and available credit -- to four marketing companies selling items as diverse as Burpee seeds and magazine subscriptions.
Many in the produce industry, which has been buffeted by recalls for items as diverse as spinach, peppers and papayas, are quietly rooting for the company.
Dallas/Fort Worth and airports in Atlanta, San Francisco, Reno, Nev., Indianapolis and Minneapolis also feature new automated kiosks, operated by Zoom Systems, that sell items as diverse as iPods or Motorola cellphones and Neutrogena or Proactiv skin care products, priced competitively.
The nation's governors gathered here this weekend for their 93rd annual meeting, with an agenda with items as diverse as "smart growth," commerce on the Internet, energy shortages, agriculture biotechnology and health care for the poor and elderly.
But a return to tailor-made clothing makes sense in an era when manufacturers of items as diverse as computers and automobiles are building customized products to satisfy customers' idiosyncratic desires for big hard drives and metallic paint finishes.
The company helped thousands of hospitals, rehabilitation centers, home health agencies and doctors' offices nationwide negotiate prices for medical supplies — a wide range of items as diverse as saline solution and huge imaging machines.
The group that made the MP3 standard official is the International Organization for Standardization, or ISO, a nongovernmental group based in Geneva that sets specifications for items as diverse as shipping containers and dashboard indicators.
